A personal trainer app for your clients, with your name on it
Most coaching software is rented by the seat and shaped by someone else’s opinion about how programming works. We build custom coaching platforms for trainers who have outgrown that: your method in the data model, your brand in the App Store, your database. Scoped in a $1,500 planning sprint, built from $12,000.
The crossover point
Four reasons coaches leave the platform they started on
None of these apply on day one. They arrive quietly, usually somewhere between one and three hundred clients, and by the time a coach is searching for a developer they can normally name at least two of them.
The seat fee scales with your success
Per-client pricing is a fair deal at thirty clients and a tax at three hundred. Every coach who has built their own platform did the arithmetic on the same day: what the subscription costs annually versus what a bounded version one costs once. There is a crossover point, it is specific to your roster, and it is worth calculating before anyone writes code.
It is someone else's brand in your client's pocket
Your clients open an app with another company's name in the App Store listing, another company's onboarding, another company's support email when something breaks. For a coach selling a $200/mo transformation program, that gap between the promise and the product is a real retention cost.
Your method does not fit their data model
Every coaching platform encodes an opinion about how programming works: sets and reps, blocks, percentages of a tested max. If your method is autoregulated, or velocity-based, or built around a scoring system you invented, you spend your week entering workarounds in the notes field. That is the clearest signal that the tool is now working against you.
You cannot get your own data out
You want adherence by program week, churn against check-in frequency, which exercises correlate with clients quitting. Most platforms will show you their dashboard and not your database. Coaches who want to make product decisions eventually need the export their SaaS does not offer.
The honest version
When you should not build a custom app
We would rather lose the project than sell a coach a $12,000 platform that replaces a subscription they were happy with. Here is where we send people away, and where a build genuinely pays.
Under ~100 clients, standard programming
Use off-the-shelf
A subscription platform costs less than the maintenance retainer on your own app. Spend the difference on a website and lead flow instead.
You want your brand in the App Store
Custom, or a white-label first
Some platforms sell a branded wrapper. It is a legitimate middle step, and cheaper than a build. When the wrapper still shows their seams, that is when a custom app pays.
Your programming method is your product
Build it
If the thing clients pay for is a method no platform models, the software has to model it. This is the single most common reason our coaching-platform clients start.
You are selling to other coaches
Build it
The moment you have coaches under you, or you license your system, you need multi-tenant roles, permissions and billing. No client-facing SaaS gives you that layer.
Wearable data drives the programming
Build it
Readiness-led coaching needs raw recovery, strain and sleep data on your own rules, not a summary widget. That is a wearable integration at $3,500 per platform against a data model you control.
Not ready for an app but drowning in client messages? The AI Coach Assistant starts at $1,999 and absorbs the repetitive layer without you leaving the tools you already use.
See every priceThe six surfaces
What a coaching platform is actually made of
A version one does not need all six. It needs the two or three your roster touches every week, built properly, plus a schema that leaves room for the rest.
Client app
Today's session, exercise demos, logging that takes seconds between sets, history, progress photos, habit and nutrition tracking if your method uses them. The bar is simple: a client mid-workout with sweaty hands can log a set without thinking.
Check-ins and messaging
Scheduled check-in forms, threaded messaging, video replies, read state and nudges. The check-in flow is where retention is won, and it is the surface most generic platforms treat as a chat window bolted to the side.
Coach dashboard
Whose adherence dropped this week, who has not logged in six days, who is due for a program change. Sorted by who needs you, not alphabetically. This screen is why coaches leave spreadsheets.
Program builder
Templates, blocks, progressions, substitutions and the rules your method actually uses. Build once, assign to fifty, override for the three clients with a shoulder. The hard part is your logic, not the UI.
Payments and plans
Subscriptions, one-off programs, pauses, upgrades and failed-card recovery. On mobile this usually means in-app purchase handling via RevenueCat, which is a smaller project than most coaches expect and a bigger one than they budget for.
Content and delivery
Video libraries, form-check uploads, PDFs, courses and gated resources. Streaming costs money at scale, so we size and price the media layer honestly during planning rather than discovering it in month three.
The differentiators
The two features clients notice, and both are their own project
Wearable sync and camera-based form feedback are the features coaches ask about first and the ones most likely to be underestimated. Neither belongs inside a version-one estimate as a line item called “integrations.”
Wearable sync — $3,500 per platform
A client with a phone and a watch reports the same steps twice. A workout logged at 11:50 pm in one timezone and synced at 7 am in another breaks a streak. The API call is the fast part; deduplication, merge rules and midnight boundaries are where the calendar goes. How we build wearable integrations.
Form feedback and rep counting — from $12,000
Pose estimation that counts reps and flags a rounding back is a genuine computer-vision project with its own discovery phase, not a feature toggle. If it is core to your method, price it separately and build it deliberately. Computer vision for fitness.
Scope and price
Five stages, each with a published number
Fixed price, published deadline, no hourly billing. Third-party costs are yours and billed to your own accounts: app-store fees, hosting, video delivery and any API licences. We give you the expected range for those during planning, not after launch.
MVP Planning Sprint — $1,500, five days
Your method written down as a data model, user journeys for client and coach, the version-one scope, a prioritised backlog, architecture options and a real build estimate. Credited in full toward the build. Most coaches say this week was the first time their programming system existed outside their head.
Version one — MVP build from $12,000
A bounded, shippable coaching platform: client app, program delivery, check-ins, coach dashboard, payments. Not every feature on the list. The ones your roster touches weekly.
Wearables — $3,500 per platform
HealthKit, Google Health Connect, Garmin, Whoop, Fitbit or Oura, with deduplication, background delivery, timezone handling and real-device QA. Add the ones your clients actually wear, one at a time.
Release — QA and app-store submission
Test strategy, device matrix, a prioritised defect list and a written go/no-go call. App-store release readiness is a $599 package on its own; health and fitness apps get reviewed against specific rules and a rejection costs you a week.
After launch — from $1,000/mo
Monitoring, fixes, dependency updates, OS releases and shipping the next thing. Two OS releases a year will break something in a fitness app that reads health data. Budget for the year, not the launch.
Want the arithmetic before the call? The fitness app cost calculator builds a range from these same published prices, and the full price list shows what every budget band genuinely buys.
Why us
We only build for health, wellness and fitness
50+ apps in production, 100+ products shipped, 100k+ downloads driven and a 4.8 average rating across the portfolio we maintain. Fitness and health products in that portfolio include Affili-Fit, TrackerMax, Qualoo and Physio on the Go. The practical benefit is that nobody on the team is learning what a deload week is, or discovering HealthKit’s background delivery rules on your budget.
Before you commit
What coaches ask us first
Should I build my own app or just use Trainerize or Everfit?
Use the off-the-shelf platform until it costs you something real. For most coaches under a few hundred clients, a subscription coaching platform is the correct answer and we will tell you so. Building your own starts to make sense when seat fees are eating a visible share of revenue, when your programming method does not fit the product's data model, when you need your own brand in the App Store rather than a sub-account inside someone else's, or when you want to sell to other coaches. If none of those are true yet, spend the money on marketing instead.
What does a custom personal trainer app cost?
An MVP build starts at $12,000 and a full custom build at $25,000, both scoped in a five-day MVP Planning Sprint at $1,500 that is credited in full toward the build. Wearable integrations are $3,500 per platform. After launch, app maintenance starts at $1,000/mo. Every published price is on our pricing page, and we will tell you before you pay if your scope genuinely lands above these numbers.
How long before my clients are actually using it?
Plan on a five-day planning sprint, then a bounded version one. The honest variable is not our build speed, it is how much of your programming logic has to move into software. Coaches with a written, repeatable method ship fast. Coaches whose method lives in their head spend the first week of the sprint getting it out.
Can it sync with Apple Watch, Whoop, Garmin and Fitbit?
Yes, at $3,500 per platform. Pick the platforms your actual roster wears rather than all six. HealthKit and Google Health Connect cover most general clients, Garmin covers endurance athletes, Whoop and Oura cover recovery-led programming. Each integration includes deduplication, background delivery, timezone handling and QA on real devices.
Do I own the code?
Yes. It ships in your repository, under your accounts, with documentation written for a developer who is not us. That is the whole point of leaving a SaaS platform, and an app you cannot take elsewhere just recreates the problem with extra steps.
What about client health data and privacy?
We build HIPAA-aware, compliance-conscious systems and map the sensitive-data and claims boundaries during planning. For a typical fitness-coaching app, the real work is deciding what you genuinely need to store, keeping intake questionnaires away from anything clinical, and being explicit in-app about scope of practice. We do not issue certifications or legal sign-off, and we do not determine whether a product is a regulated medical device.
I already have an app and it is a mess. Do you rebuild?
Not automatically. App / Product Rescue is $2,500 over ten days: a full technical assessment of what exists, a fix plan and a quote. Roughly as often as not the foundation is sound and the problem is three specific things, in which case you pay for the fix and keep the app you already have.
Related services
Around the coaching platform
Let’s create together
Tell us your roster size and your method
We'll come back with whether you should build at all, and if you should, exactly what version one contains and what it costs. Usually within one business day.